It is not that the government did not take any initiative. In 1993, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), New Delhi, linked the State Crime Records Bureau (SCRB) at Gandhinagar with Crime and Criminal Information System (CCIS). About 27 computer monitors were distributed among the district police headquarters and commissionerates, but the system remained confined to one-sided information.

NCRB had prepared formats for registering FIR, arrests, and other crimes so that access to records and data became easy. Initially FIRs were to be stored in the formats and after the feeding it could be stored directly in the computers in police stations.

Networking between the police stations was to be initiated after feeding the old records and data. But at present the feeding is being undertaken only in the police commissioner's office and district headquarters. The unfortunate part is that police has had to resort to use of unqualified jawans as computer operators. Floppies, hard disk, cursor and mouse all put together can fox them for days and then to expect them to read and write in English is stretching it too much.

``These jawans are now monitoring the information system in Gandhinagar bureau though they have undergone a brief training'', R D Tamhane, director general of police and director of SCRB told Newsline.But Tamhane also clarified that some of the jawans have picked up well.

Training programmes were also initiated for other employees and cops from Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bombay, Goa and Jammu & Kashmir. Every year the SCRB trains 210 trainees, 60-70 per cent of them from Gujarat.

But the government has never invited computer professionals. ``We should recruit professionals and give them ranks like the Army because this is the stage of specialisation. If necessary, they should be paid special allowances to stay on the job as they can understand the requirement of the police and can develop programmes required for local level,'' observed a senior IPS officer.

After five years of half-hearted efforts to link all the district headquarters, commissionerates and special investigative branches of police through the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) computers at New Delhi, the state government realised that without professional hands results would always be incomplete.

Finally, last month the government purchased 49 computers with Pentium-200 chips and about seven servers (for networking) from a private company, through the SCRB. Special inspector-general Amitabh Pathak, who has been appointed the head of a coordination committee by the DGP to pursue and install the new system, said the installation and training of operators was going on simultaneously. The department would soon have this new system where apart from using their own software, the officers could communicate with each other from any branch or district.

``Earlier there were many constraints in the system. Now we have obtained professional expertise on payment and also purchasing some packages to form our own software,'' Pathak added. The system would be helpful in letter writing, preparing work-sheet and all other important works which a computer can do. It would be connected to all the district headquarters, range headquarters, commissionerate, intelligence departments, CID-crime and armed units.